Laura Jurd: Big Footprints

"It’s difficult to describe, but I always find it such an exciting thing about art in general–the whole universal language thing that it achieves and the way it can connect a bunch of strangers in a room." — Laura Jurd

By IAN PATTERSON 
February 16, 2017

Every few years a band appears that injects a welcome shot of adrenaline into the jazz mainstream, exciting media, promoters and fans alike—the Neil Cowley Trio, Phronesis, GoGo Penguin and Snarky Puppy all spring to mind. Dinosaur, an English quartet led by trumpeter Laura Jurd, is being widely tipped to create such waves on the strength of Its debut album, Together, As One (Editions, 2016). It's received glowing reviews, catapulting the group to the front cover of Jazzwise—the UK's leading jazz magazine—and garnering a rare five star thumbs-up from The Guardian's John Fordham. The UK has succumbed to this exciting new group and the rest of Europe beckons. 

A new group? Well, not entirely. Jurd, Elliot Galvin, Conor Chaplin and Corrie Dick have been together since 2010, going under the name of the Laura Jurd Quartet. After one critically acclaimed album and six years gigging and building a musical identity, it seemed like an odd move, not to say a risky one, to change the band's name. 

"A lot of the bands that I love—none of them are called the so-and-so Quartet," explains Jurd. "Because of the direction the music was heading in, and because it feels like such a band and not a fleeting project, I just didn't feel it was right anymore to call it that [Laura Jurd Quartet] anymore, though I'm sure I will do projects in the future under my own name." 


The name Dinosaur and its music had been fermenting in Jurd's mind for some time. "I had this band called Dinosaur in my head, which was electric, a bit rocky, and way in the future. The music we were playing started to turn into that and I started thinking, maybe this funny little fantasy band I have in my head is actually my band," Jurd laughs. "Definitely we had to make a decision about the name before recording an album because once you've made an album as a band that's it."

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